This is rather emotional - and I am not needing others to post in sympathy, I just need to say this away from places where I see my friends online - and if any of you know who’s death has precipitated this little rambling page - my heart is with you too. I just felt like I needed to say something.
For the past few years, or more, someone I have known has died at the rate of at least one person a year. The pub we frequent seems to have a dwindling regular’s list - I wondering with the numbers of people who had passed away in the past year if they should add a memorial page to their website and add plaques to the back of bar stools which once contained the rear end of the dearly departed.
This pub is an inner city pub, where the regular patrons have been artists, musicians, city workers, british nannies, ex-pats, soccer fans, young kids in their 20’s with pierced everything and in the summer the patio is parade of tattoos. The rich and poor mingle in this dingy smoke filled bar, and friendships cross social groups, sexualities, and age with an ease only seen in this bar. This is a place where a gay bike courier in his 40’s, a thirty something punker, and a 50 year old nanny from Manchester can share a table while their partners a 19 year old model, a rave going industrial music fan, and a bartender from a biker bar play darts and not a soul even thinks twice about it - although we know many people, even into adulthood are still cliquey.
In some ways this pub can be a utopian haven - not so much lately. The bar is becoming trendy - and although our crowd still rules the Saturday Jams, and after work beer shifts - there have been incidents of violence due to suburban kids who don’t like freaks coming to the bar thanks to the “Red Mile” just 2 years ago making 17th Ave popular. But still it is our pub, and it is like a family at times.
In the past year, 5 patrons of this pub have passed away - and 3 of them were friends or at least close aquatinances.
This time, he was a friend, albeit not a close one, but someone who I had spent many an afternoon chatting with - and now he too is gone. My friend A watched Coronation Street with him every weekend, and was far closer. When she left a message on the phone, I heard the tears in her throat - and I know that his old roomies A & A - albeit they don’t live in the city will be far more devistated - and will find a way to get here to say good bye. I wasn’t this close to him, but it still hurts. I don’t even know about his family, but I know when I needed a friend to talk to - he was in the stool beside me at the bar. I remember the second date with the man I am with ended up at one of his great backyard parties. I remember talking about food, music, art - and he was a great artist too. I liked him, and although we were only pub friends - he was a friend.
Faces are disappearing, and I almost don’t want to go to the funeral or the wake afterwards in the pub because I just feel like death is staring into my face every time I see this crowd.
I am only in my 30’s, and I wish I thought of funerals as something rare, something important, but I am feeling angry - I have lost too many people.
J, N, S, S, N, J, D, G, M, and P (and I know I am forgetting old friends long gone) - I miss you.
Maybe after the funeral, I will have a seat at the bar and not feel the ghosts in the stool next to me. I will feel better after the funeral… I hope.